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A heated debate lately went viral on social media, after someone asked a query for females: which would you prefer be lost in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, highlighted divides between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought about it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable coda where men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how stupid they had been to select the animal and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.

Portraying the Setup

To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this clever little setup. The six-part drama is adapted from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to begin a new ministry within Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the locals particularly appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.

The Opposing Forces

Quickly collaborating against him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.

Narrative Development

With the seeds of conflict sown, it is time to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward set out to verify.

A Strange Creation

This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, in which violence, be it from the wild or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully becoming immersive.

Stylistic Shifts

Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.

Opposing Goals

The village elite are bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing allures and terrors presented by science and religion. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”

• To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.